One of the root causes of our education system’s dysfunctionality is the way we train teachers. With very few exceptions, public-school teachers must be certified, and to become certified, they need to have graduated from a college “ed school” program.
That has long been a problem. As far back as 1991, it was clear that ed schools did much more to indoctrinate teachers with “progressive” beliefs than to teach them how to teach effectively. (I say 1991 because that was the year Rita Kramer’s illuminating book Ed School Follies was published; the leftist takeover, of course, began much earlier than that.)
Could the president of a flagship university do anything to improve things? In this article, the American Enterprise Institute’s Max Eden explains how the University of Florida’s Ben Sasse could change the landscape of teacher preparation. The Florida legislature has enacted legislation making it illegal for ed schools to teach “woke” junk any longer. (Even in Florida, they do.) Instead, they must focus on the knowledge and skills that teachers actually need.
Eden writes, “The possibilities here are incredible. At minimum, Sasse could require his teachers’ college to actually help teachers teach. Best practices in classroom management and student discipline, rigorous instruction in the science of reading, and additional content area knowledge for science, math, or history teachers should be a top priority.”
When it was announced that Ben Sasse (former Republican senator from Nebraska) had been chosen as the president of the University of Florida, the Left wailed. Let us hope that Sasse now really gives them something to wail about.